Liberty

3. Liberty

3.1 It’s a Gift to Be Simple, It’s a Gift to Be Free

If we have optimism, humor, understanding, faith, hope, love, self-control and the ability to step outside ourselves into a universal, collective consciousness and into concern for others as well as ourselves; and if we have the desire and willingness to change (not just intent to change or idle talk about changing)—we will become filled with creative energy and vibrant life force, and yes, we will be free. We will free not only our bodies, but also our minds and spirits. The more positive energy that emanates from us into the world, the more healing that will take place in the world. It keeps boiling down to the same thing: what the world needs now (and always) is love. Our positive healing energy is needed everywhere, especially in these trying times.

So, we should ask ourselves, are our world leaders working to lead us toward Utopia or not? The answer is obvious.

Are we told the truth about the link between our food and lifestyle and our state of health? No. We’re told to drink Coke, eat sugared cereals, and spray poisonous chemicals on ourselves to “keep bugs off.” Let’s not expect to be enlightened by our “system,” for it is to the system’s advantage that the sheep stay in the herd, and not be “carried away” with wild ideas of freedom or notions of exceptional mental clarity or abilities, thus realizing their full potential as human beings. The system of centralized wealth prefers to homogenize its people into a nice, workable “arrangement” that best ensures the continued survival of its authority and power to keep things “under control.”

Funny, I was under the impression that the founding fathers (and mothers) of this country intended to govern themselves. What was that they said about government by the people, for the people, and so on?

Those of us of the technological age who’ve been spared certain survival necessities, such as having to walk miles to a well for water just to live, still have our own special challenges to meet. Our education and the media have given us more opportunity to view the broad spectrum of events and their consequences; “knowing” more, we have a deeper responsibility to truth and to life. The more we receive from life, the more we should give back in return. And, as the saying goes, “somebody has to do it.”

It is evident that each of us must explore our own mental capacities and strengths, and find the truths that are to be revealed, for we aren’t getting enough support from our world leaders in evolving to a consciousness of world peace and harmony. It is we, the people of this planet, who must demand a release from the bondage of weapons and war, and insist that production of instruments of death be stopped, once and for all.

The slaveholders of the past didn’t just wake up one day (until forced to do so) and tell the slaves: “Okay, you’re free now.” We can’t wait for our “leaders” to “free” us. We must be free now. We are supposed to be free already, but who are the real slaves today? Every living being that is bound by the chains of war and hostility and who lives under the shadow of potential nuclear destruction—every living being on this planet, to be exact. We are being held back from our true work and kept from evolving toward our higher destiny. Ironically, here is an unusual situation in which even the slavemaster is enslaved—from now on, what happens to the slaves will happen to the slave “masters” as well. They now risk becoming victims of their own mistakes. While our “leaders” have at their “disposal” thousands of human hands ready (if not willing) for action, capable of making something immense in the spirit of cooperation, what do they do? They use our energy to create a system that could destroy us all, themselves included. Now does that make any sense?

We have years of struggle, suffering, joy, birth and creation behind us already. Let’s not throw it all way! We are free to choose life. What are we waiting for?

Just as fresh air, sunshine and healthy food are necessary for nourishing our physical bodies, freedom is one of our most precious treasures to be preserved in safeguarding our minds and Spirits. We need freedom for our mental health and well-being, as much as we need air to breathe. Although we’ve made progress in some areas, human rights in the world today cannot be taken for granted by most people. Just as physical illness reflects some imbalance in the body, the sad state of affairs in human rights reflects the moral decay so prevalent today. We are told we live in a democracy, but we must be ever-watchful and vigilant of what freedom we do have, and hold on to it with all our strength. It could even use some improvement. Now that the computer age is here, we must be especially cautious of “world systems” and being numbered, catalogued and filed. The world economy is shaky; if transitions are made to a “cashless” system, necessitating numbering of citizens, a word to the wise … freedom as we know it could all but disappear in the “ultimate” system. Computers, like all our inventions, are tools—as useful or destructive as we make them.

There are three principal groups in the United States dedicated to ending human rights abuses: Amnesty International, Helsinki Watch and Americas Watch. Amnesty International won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, and has 150,000 members here and 500,000 worldwide. It also watches out for political prisoners, for the countless people suffering in jail whose only “crime” was to speak out against injustice—nonviolent people of conscience who tried to better the lives of others. A 1984 report from Amnesty International (“Torture in the Eighties”) carried meticulously-detailed accounts of inhumane treatment of prisoners in 96 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Amnesty tries to publicize abuses and pressure governments guilty of human rights violations. Now that the world is so small, we all have a vested interest in global human rights, in staying awake — the fox will come when the chickens are sleeping …

3.2 We Shall Overcome

More and more sanctuary movements have begun to take an active role in reaching out to refugees from other countries who are fleeing political persecution and violence at home, and they must often defy official disapproval (and, or risk imprisonment) in order to shelter these people. Even church members are getting involved, saying that what they are doing is providing sanctuary, a historical and religious tradition dating from the Middle Ages. Court trials have already resulted. A statement issued by Austin Quakers said: “There is a law that binds us as one within the spirit, which cannot be made subject to laws constructed in response to national interests. We declare our willingness to provide sanctuary for these, our sisters and brothers, to hold them within the boundaries of our spiritual community, safe from pursuit and prosecution by the authorities.” Another group made this statement:

“We implore immigration officials and the court system to cease in their persecution of innocent people fulfilling their duty as Christians, and are proud of those who lay their reputations and lives on the line to protect, nourish, and care for the poor of other nations who seek nothing more than the same opportunity our refugee forefathers sought and obtained during the past two and more centuries.”

Matthew 10:16… “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”
26: “Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.”

3.3 “Reaching out to touch someone”

With the growth of technology and industry worldwide, our world cultures have been brought from the “dawn of time” to “modern civilization,” sometimes almost literally overnight, in a single jump from “primitive” times to the 20th century. Just like the pizza people, we deliver, alright—for a price. There’s a trade-off, and many souls have been “sold” along the way.

But while our businesses are arriving in faraway lands to look for a good deal on cheap labor, less safety restrictions perhaps, and so on, and arrive to buy and sell weapons and war, there’s a parallel movement going on—one most of us have been part of at one time or another: the “world traveller’s association”—the real diplomats-on-the-street of this planet. The next time we’re gazing from a hammock in a tiny, relaxed terrace nestled among lush vegetation in a tropical country, sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice, be assured that we are actually hard-at-work, as members of the real international Peace Corps, bringing ourselves to others, drawing the world closer. People are travelling internationally as never before and that’s had a profound impact on world society as a whole: more and more people see each other now. Even the goatherder in Morocco gazes face-to-face into the eyes of the American family from Kansas—two worlds meet again. The more we see each other, the less we can be “strangers.”

Not only does this ever-broadening circle of international friends accelerate the quantum leap humanity is now making into collective consciousness; it also strengthens our chances globally to learn the truth more often. Whereas national leaders, newspapers or TV can (and do) lie or censor news, say what they want and try to shape everyone’s reality and conform society’s members, the fact remains that nowadays, many more people everywhere are also picking up the phone just to talk to a good old buddy or business associate on the other side of the world and they’ll ask “what’s new?”. So, stories come out here and there— much news is still shared in the “old-fashioned” way—by word-of-mouth. This international grapevine is unlike any there’s every been before in our recorded history—even gossip has gone international!

Much truth can leak through, because if there’s one thing people are famous for, it’s their ability to talk. Now that folks are chatting from Germany to Thailand to Timbuktu, a lot of truth can even leak through today’s “sophisticated” totalitarian efforts around the world to control what can be heard in the media! The net thrown out by our dictators now has many holes in it, and as fast as they can “fix” them, we can make new ones! This international network of friends protects all of us because it keeps real channels of communication open; it exists beyond the formal rhetoric of world leaders who communicate to us (and each other) only what they want us to hear. This real communication network functions on a global level and yet is still unstructured—it exists and is thriving outside “government control and regulation”—a loose network of individuals with no control from specific, visible leaders—independent.

The world community is apparently healing itself despite—not because of—government, which is the “drug” in this case that’s supposed to “cure” society. If the people “can’t take care of themselves,” they look to the government to play the role of doctor, to decide “what’s best for them,” to take the responsibility out of their hands, and the government is more than happy to do so. But even today’s tyrants will find that truth will still pop up “in the strangest places.” Just as some weeds are much hardier than domesticated hybrid plants, luckily for us, truth is one of the strongest weeds of all—stubborn and tenacious. No matter how hard a ruler might try to keep people ignorant (and thus dependent) and uninformed, light still penetrates the darkness again and again. Trying to keep truth a secret is harder than trying to stop the tide of water at the ocean’s edge with your bare hands! Truth will surface again and again—that’s the beauty of it. Like a blade of grass that clings stubbornly to life in a crack in the cement of a hot city sidewalk, truth clings to us in hope of survival.

And the truth shall set us free.

We’ve already taken a bit of “license” in speaking freely of phenomena of the mind which we’re only beginning to experience, let alone understand. But lest the skeptical among us question the reality of anything in nonphysical “reality” too hastily, let’s refer to the following excerpts on the CIA‘s interest and dabblings in these phenomena. It is becoming increasingly apparent that we have to guard not only the freedom we expect for our physical bodies, but also the nonphysical freedom that is our heritage as spiritual beings.

Omni (10/80) reports: Declassified documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (one worth all our effort protecting) by the American Citizens for Honesty in Government revealed a 20-year CIA mind-control operation that experimented with everything from hypnosis and behavior modification to psychoactive drugs (such as LSD) and electroshock, all well-documented. “Less noticed among the esoterica included in the so-called Project Bluebird (later renamed Project Artichoke, still later MKULTRA) was another possible secret weapon: extrasensory perception.” The agency’s dream was spelled out in an April 1952, memo: “If a number of individuals could be found in the U.S. who have a very high ESP capacity, these talented individuals could be assigned to intelligence problems. Such a problem as whether or not the (deleted) had a submarine pen could be attacked by ESP.”

It might be worth noting here that the media In the last few years has also given more attention to incidents of police departments using “psychics” to solve crimes, often with amazing success. If there were “nothing at all” to extrasensory perception, it is highly doubtful that such conventional organizations as the police department (or the CIA) would even consider such angles in the first place. Phenomena occurring out of our physical realities have been given little public attention in the media, but obviously some people know something that hasn’t been generally publicized, for evidence does exist that these phenomena are not only real, but being recognized more often, and as with everything else, are capable of being used for us or against us. This is another good reason to be ever-vigilant.

Of note is the fact that, after the early fifties, CIA documents are “mum” about ESP and PK (psychokinesis): “Perhaps the CIA dropped the idea. But perhaps it actually implemented an ESP cryptocracy, and perhaps the documents detailing it are classified. The latter possibility is raised (along with a few eyebrows) by this January 1952, statement: ‘If we are to undertake to push this research as far and as fast as we can … it would be necessary to be exceedingly careful about thorough cloaking of the undertaking. The CIA has declined comment.”

A later newspaper article (4/18/85) announced that the “Supreme Court recently gave the CIA absolute power to keep sources of information secret, even if the sources are not confidential and the information itself is not classified.” Congress in 1947 gave the director of central “intelligence” very broad authority to protect all sources of intelligence information from disclosure. The 1985 decision overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington—the CIA had said that ruling would “cripple its ability to gather intelligence because the agency would be forced to reveal sources.” The case involves a 1977 suit filed under the Freedom of Information Act by lawyer John Sims and Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen Health Research Group. They sought the names of individuals and institutions involved in research under the CIA’s MKULTRA project (financed from 1953 to 1966 “to counter Soviet and Chinese brainwashing techniques”). It included “experiments in which researchers administered LSD and other psychoactive drugs to unwitting persons. At least two persons died as a result of the experiments. The agency had refused to reveal names of researchers of many of the institutions involved, citing the 1947 law.”

We need to keep a watchful eye on the activities of such groups designed to “protect” our interests, for just as parents can become guilty of Mild abuse, such organizations can easily become guilty
of freedom abuse! The reality that we are faced with is: every day we’re told that such things as vitamins, drugs, weapons, the government, and so on “protect us,” but we’re becoming increasingly aware of the fact that what really protects us are such things as truth and freedom. Most of the other nonsense we can do much better without!

Here are more excerpts on CIA-sponsored experiments MKULTRA, from Psychology Today, “Mind Control in 1984,” by Philip Zimbardo (psychology professor at Stanford University) 1/84:

“MKULTRA was its most notorious covert program designed to develop operational technologies for disrupting and then reprogramming an individual’s habitual patterns of perception, thought and action. Government research funds were funneled through universities and mental hospitals to encourage the experimental testing of LSD and other psychoactive drugs, as well as electroshock treatment, hypnosis and other exotic types of direct intervention in functioning of the human mind. The program was halted not because of the outrage of the citizenry (few knew of its existence) or the ethical concerns of turning American citizens into vegetables, but because it didn’t do the job. These potent gadgets and gimmicks could surely scramble anyone’s brain, but they could not direct a person’s action in pre-determined ways.”

One of the major discoveries of modern social psychology is that, under specified conditions, less social pressure can produce more attitude changes:

“The most profound and enduring changes in attitudes occur under two conditions: when people perceive they have free choice in deciding to believe in ways that are against their values, beliefs or motives, and when the force applied is just strong enough to accomplish the task. The pressure may be as innocuous as having the experimenter in an authoritative white coat say, ‘This is an important experiment…’ or touch the person’s shoulder and say confidingly, ‘do me a favor.’ People want to be good sports and team players. When people can be subtly induced or seduced into publicly behaving in ways contrary to their needs or usual standards, it produces an uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance. The tension is particularly great when people believe that they chose the alien action freely, without external pressure. To reduce their feelings of discomfort, they become their own agents of self-persuasion. Since they can’t attribute the discrepant behavior to something outside themselves, they explain it in terms of self-generated processes. ‘If I chose to do it without promise of reward or threat of punishment,’ they rationalize, ‘I must have unknowingly liked it or wanted it.’ In hundreds of studies, when intelligent subjects were induced, through means of which they were not aware, to lie, cheat, suffer or hurt someone else, they invented personal reasons to account for this atypical behavior. People devise such personal attributions to make sense of apparently irrational actions, such as eating fried grasshoppers after saying they dislike them or accepting powerful electric shocks.

Although behavior can be controlled by powerful external rewards or threats, the person controlled will not also automatically believe in the trainer’s ideology; coercion creates conformists, but not true believers. When people think an external force is powerful enough to make them act as it wishes, they often yield to the power, but do not internalize the force’s ideology. Without at least an illusion of free choice, they become passive re-actors; they take no responsibility for their actions, but attribute them to outside forces.”

When Orwell wrote 1984 (in 1948), he saw the potential power an can be wielded by professionals “who intervene in people’s lives ‘for their own good.'” But, Zimbardo continues, “he did not foresee the extent and depth of that power, which is so evident in our 1984. When control is cloaked as cure, surveillance as a security service and repression as a rehabilitation program, civil liberties can be set aside and cherished freedoms put on hold without arousing resistance or rebellion. When something is being done for you and not to you, it is difficult to complain without feeling the guilt of the ungrateful. Would-be mind controllers are springing up everywhere, unconstrained by Party allegiance. They pose more of a threat because their tactics are more subtle, their strategies more insidious and their influence more pervasive. They sell us, educate us, treat us, service us and minister to us—after first persuading us of the need to pay willingly and dearly for their product.” Let the buyer beware.

“In the end,” concludes Zimbardo, “we must individually and collectively challenge the Party line: There is indeed something called human nature that will be outraged by what is done to the least of our kind and will turn us against despots and dictators, demonic or benevolent. We defy Big Brother.”

3.4 Economic Freedom: A Penny Saved Is a Penny Earned?

“When the whole property of this universe has been inherited by all creatures, how then can there by any justification for a system in which someone receives a flow of huge excess, while others die for lack of a handful of grains.”
—P. R. Sankar

Excerpts from John Hamaker’s Survival of Civilization, “Taxes, Freedom and the Constitution”:

“Fundamental change is required to save this nation from becoming a totalitarian state. Decay is evident in every facet of our society, but few understand the cause. Rightists simply blame it all on ‘communism,’ and Liberals frantically search their first-aid kits for palliatives to treat the most painful effects of the underlying cause. This essay tells why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and why centralization of wealth occurs.

“In the matter of economics, an exponential equation similar to population growth is destroying our economy and our democracy. It is the rot that runs through the forest. Benjamin Franklin willed $100 to the city of Philadelphia. It was to be kept at compound interest until it reached $1,000,000. The inheritance paid off in a little less than 200 years. If the million were kept at 6% compounded annually for 20 years, it would reach 3.2 million; in 40 years, 10.3 million; and in 60 years it would reach 33 million. At 3% it would be only 5.9 million in 60 years; but at 7% it would be 57.9 million. Long before Franklin’s time many people made business investments of much more than $100 and realized more than 6%. Those investments which were invested in the steady money-making businesses, and passed on through inheritance, now are valued in the hundreds of millions. Today these fortunes control capital now measured in hundreds of billions. Applying the 20-, 40-, or 60-year factors shows by inspection that the rate of increase of such vast sums has far exceeded the potential rate of growth of the economy. The growth rate of the centralized pools of wealth has exceeded the finite limits of the capacity of the economy to support it. This is particularly so now, because the growth of population is the primary basis for the growth of the economy. The population growth must be stopped.

“One dollar can be plotted as a series of curves using a different rate of interest compounded annually for each curve and plotting time on the abscissa against fund increase on the ordinate. The result is the accumulation of a single dollar—the factor to be multiplied by the amount of the initial fund to find its present value. It will be noted that the curves bend gently upward until half to one million dollars is reached. Then in a 50- to 100-year period, the curve breaks upward toward infinitely large numbers.
The number of years it takes to reach the break-point depends on the rate of interest (or profit). At 3% it takes about 450 years, at 6% about 220 years, and at 10% about 125 years to reach the break-point. After that point is reached, the rate of increase in funds reaches absurdly large rates of increase which have no relation to the rate of increase of real values in the economy. Therefore, the only way such fortunes can continue to increase is to expand ownership over everything in the economy which makes money. Because of the power of large fortunes to buy out or freeze out competition, they take control of the most stable and lucrative businesses. The theoretical end result is one fortune in possession of everything in the country. In practice, when a majority of people have been impoverished, there is a revolt and a wiping out of all debts. Historically, this has occurred every few hundred years, i.e., when the large fortunes in a country have reached the break-point in the curve and have transferred much of the ownership from the people to the pools of wealth. They then have the power to reach out for every real value in the economy. The more they take, the faster the process works until they have it all.

“One does not argue with the laws of nature. One either conforms or pays the penalty. The mathematics of compound interest is natural law. We are in the self-destruct stage. Our economy is at the break-point in the curve. If we continue to permit funds to accumulate, we are certain to have our economy destroyed and our people in revolt. Money, like everything else in the environment, must be recycled to prevent destructive pollution of the economic environment.

“Specifically, there is now about one and one-half trillion dollars in public and private debts. Most of these debts are owed to pools of money which annually grow by the amount of the interest (or profit) added to it. In 60 years, at an average of 7% interest, the value of the funds would be 58 times their present value. The total growth rate has far exceeded the real growth rate of the economy. The best-protected funds have passed the break-point. They are well on the way to owning the entire country. Senator Phillip Hart said, ‘200 decision makers control two-thirds of all production.’ Senator Fred Harris said that centralization of wealth and the question of how to redistribute it will be the major issue of this decade. It had better be, because the claims to ownership by those funds are going to try to double in ten years time. An awful lot of people and small businesses are going bankrupt. Inflation and government and personal debt will continue at high rates of increase. Super-wealth has a counterfeiting machine and a government to legalize its product. It can buy us all.
“The excessive rate of growth of large pools of money according to an exponential equation is responsible for virtually all the deficiencies of the present capitalistic system as follows:

The constant growth of large pools of money in excess of real growth in the economy is highly inflationary. The avidity with which the holders of great wealth seek to multiply it leads to overexpansion of industrial capacity, overextension of credit to consumers, and vicious competition for ownership of all income-producing values.

The inflationary ‘boom’ is turned into a ‘bust’ when a significant number of people have used up their credit, and when competition caused by overproduction has closed out the least competitive companies, further depleting consumer demand. Small savings are robbed by inflation. So great is the ever-ready inflationary capacity of large pools of wealth, that the cycle of boom and bust has occurred roughly every 10 years since 1840. In each one there is a transfer of ownership from those who fail to those who have larger funds subsidizing them at an exponential rate. Example: In 1935 there were 750 breweries, in 1970 only 140. The rate of bankruptcy and conglomeration insure that there will be a lot fewer breweries after this bust period. The power of the major funds now dominates the economy. Production has become centralized, leaving behind centers of poverty.

Charity and government pick up the bill to feed people left destitute. If all present government and private debts were collected from the people tomorrow, most of us would be penniless or in debt. Almost everything in the country would be owned by about one-half of one percent of the people or the businesses in which they hold a controlling interest. Most of the people are broke. The wealth has become highly centralized. Inflation eats up the savings of older people, and they’re forced on welfare or social security. They’ve relied on fund growth for security. Insurance and private pension funds pay off about 40% and 10% respectively, and they pay off in inflated dollars. Social security isn’t an insurance fund. It’s a tax on present producers to feed older, less productive workers forced off the job by the fixed wage, fixed 8-hour day, maximum benefits concept. If social security tax payments had been funded at compound interest, inflation of the dollar would be far worse than it is, and the government would be well on the way toward ownership of the entire country. The $153 billion in private pension plans doesn’t help the 90% of contributors who get nothing back, but it sure helps the big corporations with their conglomeration plans.

Because the people of this country have been largely separated from ownership of the real wealth, the pressure of the rapidly multiplying huge pools of wealth has moved toward exploitation of the people and their resources in less developed countries. To insure those investments, large sums have been spent since WWII to insure ‘friendly’ national legislators and administrators. The result has been the absurdly hopeless policy of ‘Containment of Communism.’ Meanwhile, the revolt grows within our nation.

The forced flow of wealth from the people to the funds (directly and indirectly through taxation) reduces large numbers of people to poverty and the majority of the working force to the insecurity of having only the job (and in most cases one paycheck) between themselves and poverty. These demoralizing stresses induce crime, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other escape mechanisms to alleviate the pains, needs and wants that attend poverty.

“Poverty provides little market demand. The total national product must therefore shrink relative to actual need. This contraction means that more people enter the ranks of poverty: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Those who still work are heavily taxed to sustain the poor. Ultimately it’s the taxpayers who revolt.

“We are ruled by an exponential equation. Either we control it or we’ll join the two-thirds of the world’s population which have yielded to dictatorship for survival. Right now is the time to protect ourselves from the rule of centralized pools of wealth if we are to save our political freedom.

“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer because money ‘earns’ money at an exponential rate, whereas the economy expands directly with population and the technical ingenuity of the people. The difference between the two rates is the margin of power by which the owners of wealth impose poverty on everyone else.

“In the broad sense, taxes are government-enforced demands for a share of the consumer goods. Nothing has monetary value until human labor is applied to it. Thus a tax is forced human labor. Whether or not equal goods and services are given in exchange for the tax determines whether it’s a service institution or a means of enslaving the people.”

Hamaker says we can simplify taxes and increase our freedom by:

“outlawing all taxes ahead of the sales tax (taxes collected ahead of the consumer goods sales tax are added to the cost of goods sold and are therefore sales taxes, i.e., claims for a share of consumer goods). The burden of taxation can’t be shifted from consumer goods. A frugal person can more easily accumulate funds to start a business if taxation is deferred to the point of consumption of goods. Only when this freedom to use our national fund of ingenuity and initiative is established can we expect to eliminate the welfare rolls and withdraw workers from government into the productive economy. Then our tax burden will be lowered accordingly and this, too, is an increment of freedom. Also, if taxes were eliminated at the production level, politicians could no longer sell loopholes in exchange for campaign support. This practice has resulted in establishing economic advantages for the highest bidders— farmers, for example, can’t compete with agribusiness (which can lose money on farming and make it up elsewhere in the conglomeration where tax loopholes support it). Thus the big corporations would be less powerful and the government less corrupt. These are important increments of freedom for the people.

“Within the broad definition of taxes, there are three included in the cost of consumer goods which government says are lawful, but which are collected by individuals. When the inheritor of wealth goes to the marketplace for a yacht or a mansion, he brings no products or labor to exchange. The same thing is true of a land speculator who does nothing to increase the value of land, but whom the government allows to collect the increased value. The same is true of the stockholder, who by the grace of government and a stock split, finds himself in possession of a share of several years of company surplus earned by the ingenuity and effort of a good working force. He brings to the consumer marketplace no value which he’s earned if it’s profit above the true market value (rightful interest) of his original investment. These government-sanctioned private taxes have the same effect as government taxes: they increase demand without increasing supply and therefore inflate the price. They take units of labor without giving units of labor, which is slavery.

“This element of slavery is what makes possible the rapid conglomeration of companies and ultimately the centralization of the nation’s wealth. Man-hours of labor can be legally expropriated from, each person’s paycheck to obtain a pool of wealth with which to buy a new plant from which to hire-people from whom man-hours of labor can be expropriated to obtain a new pool of wealth, etc. When slavery is legalized, anti-trust laws have all the effect of a pea shooter against an elephant. It is these three something-for-nothing deals which, by means of the exponential equation, generate sufficient funds so transfer all ownership from the people to the funds. They are taxes collected directly by the property class and enforced by the government it controls.

“Taxes on savings, such as property taxes, can drive older workers with little income out of their homes, which then become properly of mortgage holders. The property tax is an excellent device for transferring ownership from the people to the centralized pools of wealth.

“Savings are stored labor. To take care of ourselves, we must be allowed to accumulate the results of our labor and use it to support ourselves over unproductive periods. The government that collects property or other taxes on stored labor is patently an institution of slavery.

“Another class of taxes are those used to control imports/exports. When we have obtained economic freedom, we’re going to be able to work a 4-hour day and have a standard of living and quality of living beyond most peoples imagination. Other nations can and will obtain the same results. But it can’t be done if we try to compete with technically-advanced nations overpopulated with wage slaves. We must therefore control our foreign trade to protect our own progress. As other nations turn toward freedom, we can establish free trade with them and operate as a single economy with a common standard of living. We have yet to establish one peaceful nation.

“Finally, there are special-use taxes based on the principle that if government performs a service for a particular group, they should pay for it. Gasoline taxes pay for roads, but the pressure group that results from pooling such funds has not led to intelligent environmental planning. Special-use taxes are no longer practical.

“One wonders why people have tolerated these burdens for countless centuries. The answer is two-fold: Those who hold power have always been those who have access to the unearned values. They have written the laws to suit themselves. Until very recent times they have kept the people illiterate. Even to this day, all preachers and most school teachers fear to discuss the three something-for-nothing deals. It’s only because these three causes of the centralization of wealth have brought us to the brink of crisis that the great power of wealth to perpetuate itself is slowly yielding to the force of necessity. For two-thirds of the world’s people, these ancient prerogatives of rulers have yielded to the force of bloody revolutions led by ostensibly altruistic dictatorships. Hopefully, an enlightened electorate will bring these institutions down in this country without the loss of political freedom won with so much blood through the centuries.

“What should be done to return these values to those who produced them? Inheritance and land rent value must be collected by the government. This will decrease the sales tax required. The privately-collected tax on the earnings of a working force in excess of interest is composed of increased technical efficiency, human effort, and product demand. Heretofore, this has always accrued to ownership simply because they have hire, fire and bribe control over the management. The unions now contend for this value, while the white-collar workers who had a good deal to do with the increased earnings sit or the sidelines and take whatever is handed out. Instead of the single inflationary force of profit-taking, we now also have an inflationary force from union wage demands. In monopolistic or near-monopolistic necessity industries, the reaching for profit and wages is passed on to consumers as inflated price. Of necessity, less-favored industries and unorganized workers follow along behind. This built-in inflation can be slowed by recession. It might be stopped by depression. But after recovering, it would start up again. The dollar is depreciating at a chaotic rate because we no longer have any semblance of a free market product evaluation. In order to solve this problem, we’re going to have to re-define the commodity called labor as human beings and redefine the investor as one enjoying the privilege of investing his savings at whatever interest rate the market will currently support. We must transfer the management of each company from the ownership board of directors to the working force. This will result in companies whose size rests solely on economic factors. No group of workers will remain in a conglomerate if it costs them money to do so. The better producers will pull out, and the massive pools of wealth that now dictate to government will be dispersed among small companies. We’ll have, for the first time since man left the barter economy, free market conditions. Of greatest value is the right of a working force to earn all it can earn. Under this incentive, there will soon be an abundance of goods in the marketplace. Since working hours will no longer be bound by the rigid (most profitable) 8-hour day, they’ll work when there is work to do and cut hours back when the demand declines. Technical improvements will be used to shorten hours instead of eliminating people from the payroll. The security (now based on the total payroll) of the individual and the company will both be vastly increased. Interest rates will decline to true market values. Since supply and demand are both relatively constant factors and the rigid artificial factors will be gone from the economy, the economic cycles will cease. Small business initiated and managed by one or two persons must be permitted to operate as they have been. These are some of the creative geese who lay the golden eggs. They probe all the diverse avenues for economic development. They develop products, services, and jobs. Of necessity, they must have full control over their initiative.

“Our economic troubles are man-made. They persist to this late, day in the history of civilization because greed has maintained institutions of enslavement. Even our Constitution contained a provision for the return of run-away slaves. In the intervening 200 years, human populations have covered and been compressed into habitable lands. The means of destruction of human life have been perfected. We are at Armageddon. Either good will triumph over evil or all or most of humanity will be destroyed.

“Every conceivable economic system except economic freedom has been tried without bringing internal peace to any nation, let alone between nations. It is time to test whether or not we, freed of our shackles, can find peace In the United States, the first step toward that end is the establishment of Constitutional basis for constructing a free society.”

Hamaker includes a “Proposed General Revision of the Constitution of the United Slates of America” at the end of his book Survival of Civilization. In conclusion he says “the capital goods and personal property must be dispersed among all the people if they’re to attain financial security and the independence of action required to initiate an economy of abundance to replace the present hand-to-mouth rat-race economy of scarcity. To accomplish this, 100% of both earnings and savings must be protected by law against the greed of those who hold power. The autocracy of ownership in the corporation must be broken to enable the people who work there to become a flexible unit of production responsive to supply and demand.”

“Politicians talk of tax reform as a matter of closing loopholes and/or confiscatory taxes at high levels of income. It’s nonsense. If they taxed 100% over $50,000 and closed all the loopholes, it would only accelerate the process of conglomeration of companies. Instead of taking profit, owners would leave it in the corporation where it can be used to buy more companies. The power of wealth, not spending money, is the prize sought. Railroad cars, yachts, airplanes, expense accounts, pseudo-retirement plans—all have been used by corporate ownership as private property exempt from personal income tax. The bill must be paid in the price of goods in the consumer marketplace.

“Politicians talk about inflation as a political argument at election time. Not one of them proposes measures which will get at the cause by stopping the flow of wealth away from the people, and the welfare government that sustains them, to the centralized pools of wealth which new own most of us. When they try to slow the inflation rate of the exploitative economy by arbitrarily raising interest rates, the result is decreasing credit transactions and throwing marginal producers out of work. So great is the inflationary pressure from government debt, national corporations, and national unions that only a serious depression can significantly slow the rate of destruction of the dollar.

“Politicians talk about unemployment at election time (between them they talk of welfare and make-work). Meanwhile, small businesses fall like dominoes at the rate of 10,000 a year. Economists in ivory towers have told politicians that free trade is the ideal international trade system. So politicians have authorized free trade because this is what their masters (the owners of the centralized pools of wealth) want. The expropriated earned surplus of numerous corporations has been used to ship whole plants and management personnel to countries where labor is cheap. The low-cost goods shipped back to this country have eliminated numerous industries. Even the steel and auto industries are finding they aren’t competitive. There’s been a large shift from production to service industries. In the process of going out of production, our real unemployment and underemployment has soared. The phony government statistic doesn’t give the true figure. The true figure includes the forced retirees over 50 and the 40,000,000 under the poverty level. The government picks up the check for everything, including the price of wars to keep the “free world’s” people and resources safe for exploitation by the controllers of our centralized pool of wealth. The government, of course, passes the bill to the people who do the work. This ‘free trade’ has become one more tool by which rich get richer and poor get poorer.

“Politicians say we can’t have a depression again. The fact is that the only thing that has held a depression in check since WWII was an expanding economic system based primarily on electronics, constant war production, and an expanding federal and personal debt load. Environmental costs here, and cheap labor abroad, move industry and capital to foreign lands where the costs can be evaded. We are fed up with the cost of war. Government and personal credit have about run out.

“Politicians have no answers because the exploitative economy doesn’t work. As long as history has been recorded, nations have failed every few hundred years. Before the industrial revolution, inheritance and land speculation were primary factors in bringing all the land into the hands of a few people. Those who owned the land had the power to run the government. To protect their ownership, they raised the land rent to raise armies and build castles. When the rent rose above 50% of the crop value, revolt and redistribution of the land always occurred. As trade developed, the profit system was developed and again a share of the labor was confiscated by ownership. As governments became more complex, they, too, learned to take a share of the labor. Thus the total tax at the point of revolt made up of the personal levies by ownership plus the taxes levied by the government which serves the ownership class. If we add up the total taxes in this country, we have approximately 35% taken by government plus an inexact amount represented by the burden of inheritors, land speculators, and profit in excess of a theoretical free market interest on money. The total tax is probably in excess of 50%.

“In 2 centuries, we’ve been sorely corrupted by a capitalistic system which included the 3 something-for-nothing deals, which in concert with an irrational exponential equation causes the centralization of wealth and power. By the simple expedient of making our capitalistic system honest, we can gradually disperse the wealth among the people. In the hands of the people, it will support an excellent standard and quality of living. It will never accumulate to sums whose rate of increase reaches toward infinite quantity and infinite power—and arrives at infinite weakness in that the whole system can be destroyed by a single dollar accumulating its interest for a long period of time.

“All the industrialized ‘free nations’ which now contain large fortunes and funds operating at high rates of interest have the same problem. The bonanza of productivity resulting from widespread public education has peaked. The ever-present ability of the pools of wealth to accumulate ownership is now the dominant force. Within 10 to 20 years the industrialized “free nations” will all either establish economic freedom under law or they’ll be under dictatorship. The something-for-nothing deals have brought the funds of wealth in this country to the point where they’ve caused a 60% inflation in the last 15 years. If given our economic freedom, we can work our way out of this mess. Without economic freedom, we’re going to lose our political freedom to some form of dictatorship because the economy doesn’t work.

“It is pure fantasy to believe that this economy can last for more than a few years without redistribution of wealth. About 15 U.S. manufacturers receive a total of 88% of all business profits. About the only money-making property left to take is the land, and they are gobbling it up. We mere mortals can’t compete with fortunes which enjoy the luxury of perpetual life. Nor can the monetary system withstand the inflation of funds increasing exponentially to become so powerful that they can fix profits and prices of necessities. Taxes must inevitably keep rising to pay for the palliatives used to soften the impact of the ever-more- numerous problems which arise as our nation and its environment degenerate. The working taxpayers, who inevitably pay for everything, will eventually want to demand radical change.

“People of rank who are saying they know nothing about carbon dioxide and acid rain aren’t stupid. They’re either lying or using evasive language. Such a massive conspiracy of silence is understandable when one realizes that ‘official’ announcement of our situation would plunge the world into a financial debacle. They would no doubt like to have more time to prepare an alternate financial system to replace the international banking system. The trouble is, they’ve been wringing their hands over this for a half dozen years; meanwhile our chance of survival gets weaker and weaker.”

In defending their desires for “more studies of the problems,” our leaders are stalling for time; no one wants to tell the public the truth, so by stalling, and “not looking for evidence,” they just won’t “have to admit” that evidence exists.